I’m too numb to feel what would otherwise be a sharp jab about D-Bag Dull Man. Kristina’s eyes are wide and glassy and kind of wild. She flips her hair and makes a dash for the elevator. I’m stopped before I can follow and try to fix this horrible thing that I’ve done.
“You aren’t going anywhere, Harper.” McKayla grabs my arm. “What the hell is going on?”
* * *
I close McKayla’s office door after I walk inside, but I can see all the Shift Girls staring at me through the glass. They’re clustered together conspiratorially.
“You’d better start talking.” McKayla drums her Picasso nails on her desk. They sound like the drumroll before a public execution.
I don’t know what to say, so I go with a tactic I haven’t been employing much lately. I go with the truth.
Here goes nothing.
“I never hooked up with my stepbrother. I don’t even have a stepbrother, or really any hookup stories to tell, since I’ve never really hooked up with anyone before. I really wanted an internship at Shift this summer, so badly, but I didn’t have an interesting ‘scintillating personal essay’ of my own, so I made one up.” She doesn’t have to know that it actually happened to Kristina.
“I’m worse than Jamie,” I add. “Everything I wrote about myself is a lie.”
It feels like a knot I never realized was there has finally been untied.
McKayla’s eyes narrow.
“When you say everything was a lie . . .”
“I made things up.” I’m unable to stop myself. “Like, I’ve never had a summer fling in my entire life. Some of the blogs are true, but I’d . . . embellish.”
McKayla stops drumming her fingernails.
“Well,” she says slowly, “no one has to know your posts aren’t true, right? Who doesn’t embellish a little to get a better story?”
As chief fact-checker for the Castalia Chronicle, I know that this is not how journalism is supposed to work.
“Here’s what I think,” McKayla says. “We post your story anyway. It’s going to kill with clicks, I know it will. You told a good story, I don’t care how real it was.”
Seriously?
“But I don’t even have a stepbrother.”
“Maybe you changed the identity of your cousin to protect the innocent,” McKayla says, searching for any excuse to put up what she thinks is a clicky post. She walks around her desk and crouches so that we’re eye level. “Look, Harper, we all lie to get ahead. You can succeed here, you have the voice, and I was going to announce it later today, but you have the magazine feature. Just let this happen.”
“You can’t.” I don’t want to feel as tempted as I do.
“Technically, I can. Shift has owned the rights to that blog ever since you sent it to us in your application. Read the fine print. I can put it up whenever I want.” But McKayla’s uncanny ability to sense people’s vulnerability is on point. She turns her voice from sharp to soft, puts her hand on mine, pseudokindly, and says, “I’m here for you, Harper. Let me be your mentor. Don’t you want that profile in the magazine? Haven’t you spent your entire summer—hell, your entire life—working toward being a journalist?”
My resolve starts to waiver as I flash back to my vision of walking down the halls of Castalia High with the Shift September issue in my hand, proclaiming to the world that I am the teen journalist to watch.
McKayla continues, “Nietzsche did say that success is a great liar. Don’t you want to be successful?”
Those words jerk me back to reality. I try to hold it in, but I just start laughing.
This is not the response McKayla is expecting. She removes her hand from mine and looks at me like I’m about to lose it. Who knows, maybe I am. I’ve lost so much already.
“Of all the philosophers you could have quoted,” I say, “Nietzsche was definitely the wrong choice.”
I stand up over McKayla, who’s still crouched on the ground, and say, “I don’t care if you own the blog, you can’t put it up. If you do, I’ll tell everyone that I was lying and you knew it. It would be easy to prove—my parents are still very happily married. And ever since the MatchBook blog went viral, people have been watching me. Waiting for me to mess up. Confessing that I’m a fraud would be like giving them an early Christmas present.”
McKayla rises abruptly, her eyes as dark as I’ve ever seen them. Her features look particularly sharp, and somewhat deadly.
“If you do this, it’s professional suicide. You’re out. And you won’t just lose the magazine feature and your internship here. I have connections everywhere. So if you ever plan on being a journalist—”
I slap my badge onto her desk and leave before she can say another word. I’m not changing my mind.
* * *
“What happened in there?” Brie asks as soon as I leave McKayla’s office.
“I was just telling them about how insanely jealous your so-called friend was of you at brunch,” Gigi says. “I can’t believe she would try to hurt you like that at work, though. What a liar.”
I have to pull myself together. I wondered how things could get any worse than when I was in McKayla’s office. This is how.
“I’m the one who hurt her,” I say, barely able to make eye contact. I might have lost Kristina with all my lies, and now I’m about to lose the Shift Girls with the truth. But I just can’t keep pretending to be this person I’m turning into, this girl I don’t even like.
“I’m the liar,” I say. “The only experience I’ve had before coming here were Dance Floor Make-Outs with guys who wouldn’t ever date me. I made everything up. Everything has been a lie.”
“What?” Gigi’s expression devolves from confusion to anger to hurt. Great. Two friendships ruined in one day. Good job, Harper. “But in the Hamptons, I told you things. And you pretended . . . you let me think—” There’s a long, horrible pause. “I trusted you. I don’t trust people and I trusted you. I defended you.”
How could I do that to her? I feel so bad that I want to cry.
“Gigi, I value your friendship,” I say. “That’s real. And if you’ll just let me explain—”
“Don’t talk in bad clichés, Harper,” Gigi cuts me off midsentence. “I don’t want to hear it.”
Gigi turns away and walks toward the open kitchen. The Shift Girls follow after her, giving me quick, disapproving looks as they go. I silently pack up my workstation and head back home to Aunt Vee’s, replaying the nuclear explosion of a morning on a loop in my head, searching for the right words to say to Kristina, if the right words exist.
39
I STRUGGLE TO FIT THE keys into Aunt Vee’s front door. Since the elevator wasn’t there when I got to the lobby, I ran up the stairs. I’m wheezing by the time I stumble into the entry hall.
“This is a huge mistake; that was never supposed to go online,” I say as I trip over . . . Atticus? Pepe and Wagner are eating Princess’s food, something that the pug would be territorial about if she weren’t snuggling up on the couch next to Kristina.
And Ben.
They’re in a familiar pose. Except instead of me crying in Ben’s arms, getting mascara all over his Saint Agnes T-shirt, she is.
Kristina’s head pops up when I make my grand entrance, and she wipes away her tears almost furtively. She’s more comfortable letting Ben see her cry than me.
Her best friend.
Please let me still be her best friend.
“I can’t handle this right now,” Kristina says, rising abruptly and moving across the carpet to my room in two long steps. She slams the door.
Ben looks at me in total confusion. “Tell me that what she’s saying isn’t true,” he says. “Because you wouldn’t just exploit your best friend to, what, go viral?”
“It wasn’t like that. I didn’t mean to. . . .”
“It doesn’t work like that. You either did it or you didn’t.” Ben raises his voice. He hasn’t raised his voice since the first time we met. And he didn’t kno
w me then. Now he knows me. All the weird, clumsy, complicated parts of me. And he likes me.
Or at least he did.
I don’t know what to say back, so I don’t say anything at all.
“I can’t believe this.” Ben tousles his hair into a mad scientist’s poof and looks very sad. “You were right before. We really are different.”
He knows all the parts of me. And he hates me. It feels like there’s a switchblade to my chest.
Kristina clears her throat. She’s standing in the doorway. Her face is composed. Stoic. “Thanks, Ben, but you don’t need to do this. Would you mind?” She nods toward the front door. “It won’t be long.”
“Are you sure?” he asks softly. Ben’s protection of Kristina feels almost intimate.
How did we get here? And how did we reach a point where she needs to be protected from me?
Ben gathers up all the leashes in his right hand and, before he leaves, crosses the room to Kristina and gives her another hug. He looks back at her with his sweet, concerned eyes as he drags the dogs out the door. Did something actually happen between them? I know I pushed them together, but it feels like that switchblade is turning in my chest, hollowing me out. And not just because my best friend is so mad at me. Justifiably mad.
As soon as the door clicks behind Ben and his canine entourage, I run over to Kristina, arms outstretched. She pushes me away, like I did with Carter last night.
“Please, please, please let me explain.”
“Explain how you betrayed me?” She steps back so there’s more space between us. “But you managed to write about it so that day seemed quirky, and funny, and like no big deal? Well, it was a big deal! Things were going slightly better with my dad—do you even remember that? Now I can barely look him in the face. Stepmonster thinks I ruined her wedding on purpose. I can’t face going to Stanford with Erik. He basically told his mom I force-fed him champagne and then jumped him.”
“I know it was a big deal. I never meant . . . When I wrote it, I—”
“What’s your excuse this time? You wrote it because I said it was cool to Carpe that Effing Diem? That doesn’t mean it’s okay to carpe my life.” Kristina’s face is a thin veil over rage. “This isn’t a harmless white lie. This is my screwed-up relationship with my father and his new family. Just because your relationship with your parents is so great doesn’t mean we all have that same luxury.”
“You have it wrong. I wrote the essay months ago in my application to be an intern. My life is so boring, so I borrowed yours. I know I shouldn’t have, but I did. I didn’t write this to go online.”
Kristina just stares at me. “That makes it even worse! You had months to tell me about this and you didn’t. The fact is, you wrote it, and when it goes online, everyone will know it’s about me. God knows they won’t think you had any scandals. Water polo players are one thing. Making out with my stepbrother! You heard that girl at your office: Gross! And don’t even get me started on how you made it so ambiguous that it seemed like we might have had sex, when you know we didn’t. What, the worst day of my life wasn’t dramatic enough for you? My dad’s just starting to talk to me again. What will he think if he sees this? What are people going to think?”
“No one’s going to think anything because no one else is going to read it,” I say. “I made McKayla promise not to run it. Even though it meant giving up that profile I’d been trying to get all summer. She fired me because of it!”
Kristina jerks back when I try to get closer to her. “What, you want me to feel sorry for you? Want me to throw a ‘Harper Anderson didn’t do the wrong thing’ parade? Will that cheer you up? I’ve been trying to be sympathetic because I get that dating is new for you, and then things were really shitty after all those trolls started tweeting horrible things. But I had a hard summer, too, okay? You didn’t just ditch me at Skinny B’s, you ditched me as a friend. You walked out on me. And you said that I came here as some humanitarian rescue mission for you? Maybe I came all the way here because I wasn’t fine. Maybe I needed you. And you wouldn’t even take my calls.”
The only time Kristina cries is when there’s too much chlorine in the water, and even then, it’s rare. But I catch her finger quickly swiping away not a tear but a pre-tear that she doesn’t allow to come to term.
“I guess I was the cantaloupe,” she says.
“No,” I say. “I love you. I got so overwhelmed—”
“I don’t want to hear it. I’m out of here.” She picks up her suitcase, which is already packed.
“Where are you going?” I feel like I’m about to throw up. “Please stay. Your flight’s on Wednesday.”
“I’d rather blow my life savings on a hotel than be here one more minute. Hell, I’d rather go to Connecticut and stay with my dad.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Stop,” Kristina says as she walks to the door. “Oh, and, Harper, of all the things you said—you didn’t mean it, you didn’t think it would go live, you were busy, you were new to dating—you never once said you were sorry.”
40
I DON’T KNOW HOW TO make things better.
I go into my bedroom, lock the door (sorry, Princess), curl up under the covers, and close my eyes.
I don’t find a compelling reason to move until late that night, when Aunt Vee begins to pound on my locked door.
“Harper?” she screams from the other side. “Are you in there?”
I get out of bed groggily and drag my feet to the other end of the room.
“You look nice,” I say as I let her in. For context, I’m wearing ducky-print pajamas and she’s in a gold, crushed-silk cocktail dress with long white gloves.
“Thank God you’re all right,” she says, sinking her butt into the pillow-top mattress of my bed. “I came home as soon as I realized you weren’t at the Bosh anniversary party. Weren’t you supposed to go with Carter? I got so worried when I saw him with some trollop and you didn’t answer my calls.”
I was in virtual attendance, though. Under the covers, I was looking at pictures of Carter with a different bookish brunette in glasses on his arm before I decided to unfollow him. I didn’t feel upset that I was missing the event, though.
I was right, walking out on him is the thing I regret the least this summer. The other stuff, though, I regret a lot.
“I didn’t mean to worry you,” I tell Aunt Vee. “It’s been a horrible day.”
“I know I might seem a little . . . out of touch at times,” Aunt Vee says, “but do you want to talk about things? Just ask your mother. I gave out some pretty good advice in my day.”
“It’s okay.”
“Tell me. What’s the worst that could happen?”
And then I just let it all out. About Gigi and McKayla. About Carter and Ben and Kristina. About the deceptions and lies.
“I think it’s too late to be forgiven,” I say.
“But you haven’t even done anything about it yet,” Aunt Vee says.
“Yeah, I did. I stopped McKayla from putting up the post. I lost my job over it. If it doesn’t make Kristina feel any better to know that I got fired for doing the right thing for her, then I don’t know what else I can do.”
“Oh, Harper,” Aunt Vee says, talking to me like she did our first day together, when I had no idea what a Birkin bag was. “You have so much to learn. You didn’t get fired for her. You got fired because of you. I don’t want to sound harsh, but you got your internship on the basis of a lie. That doesn’t mean you didn’t deserve it or that you didn’t do a wonderful job at it, but still. In the real world, that gets you fired.”
Oh.
She’s right.
“So what are you doing now to show Kristina how sorry you are?” she asks. “What did she say when you apologized?”
I almost can’t bear to tell Aunt Vee that I never apologized properly. And when Kristina walked out the door, it was too late.
“I don’t think she wants to hear anything from me
at this point,” I say.
“You don’t wait for an invitation to apologize. You just do it. As loudly as possible.” Aunt Vee stands up in her dress and walks across the room. Before she leaves, she gives me a final piece of advice: “Forget all the parties and the boys and the drama, Harper. My Studio 54 years were great, but I only have a few failed marriages to show for it. My friends are the ones who have been in my life the whole time.”
* * *
I spend most of the next day going back and forth on whether or not I should call Kristina. At first I was really worried about where she’d stay. She wouldn’t have to go to her dad’s place in Connecticut, would she? But I feel a wave of relief when I see Ben post a picture of a perfectly round pancake with a smiling chocolate-chip face.
A Kristina pancake.
“Forget Clinton Street Baking Company. This is the best pancake in town,” Ben wrote in the caption.
Of course Ben would invite her to stay with his family. He’s such a good guy. So thoughtful and . . . STOP.
Stop, Harper. Stop.
I’ve missed my chance with Ben. And Ben and Kristina deserve to be happy together. They’re the most loyal people I know. Which is why I ignore the gnawing feeling that I get when I think about them together. I have no right to feel that way.
Instead of calling Kristina and interrupting the only good thing that might come from her shitty trip to New York, I put down my phone and open my notebook.
Recently, I’ve only been writing as a character. I wonder what would happen if, this time, I wrote something as me.
And so I start putting words on the page. Not observations about other people but about myself. I write about this summer and the things I regret. Hurting Kristina. Hurting Ben. Brushing off the only guy I’ve ever really liked, because I was too fixated on the one I thought I should like and too dumb to recognize what was right in front of me.
My sentences keep flowing, page after page, until the sun is setting over Central Park.
Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies Page 24